Digital technology is no longer the disruptive force in print media-it is the driving force that shapes content creation and distribution. The distinction between print and digital is not relevant anymore: publishers have become,...

For leaders in large corporations, business today often feels like being on a steep treadmill with the speed control set to max. Three months ago, the company may have finished a cost-reduction transformation to remove management layers and streamline operations. Before it is even clear that the changes have taken root,...

To encourage sustainable economic growth worldwide, a huge investment will have to be made in infrastructure projects (an estimated 5 percent of global GDP during the next 15 years), and a significant share of this investment will have to come from the private sector. Private investors are understandably cautious, however. In particular, they are concerned about political and regulatory risk and unsure how to address this complex but increasingly troubling issue, according to a new World Economic Forum report, prepared in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, which is being released at the World Economic Forum's offices in New York City,...

High-performing human resources (HR) departments help to drive the financial performance of companies, according to a new report being released today by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA). The results of an in-depth study are detailed in the report, titled How to Set Up Great HR Functions: Connect, Prioritize, Impact. The report is the eighth in the annual Creating People Advantage series, which explores emerging trends in HR. The report's authors looked at the ten-year stock performances of the public companies in Fortune magazine's "Best Companies to Work For" rankings in 2014, and compared them with the S&P 500 Index. The 100 best companies-those with the strongest HR performance-outperformed the index by nearly 100 percentage points. However,...

For the better part of three decades, a rough, bifurcated conception of the world has driven corporate manufacturing investment and sourcing decisions. Latin America, Eastern Europe, and most of Asia have been viewed as low-cost regions. The U.S., Western Europe, and Japan have been viewed as having high costs. But this worldview now appears to be out of date. Years of steady change in wages, productivity, energy costs, currency values, and other factors are quietly but dramatically redrawing the map of global manufacturing cost competitiveness. The new map increasingly resembles a quilt-work pattern of low-cost economies, high-cost economies, and many that fall in between, spanning all regions. In some cases,...

These days, there are many reasons to be bullish about the future of U.S. manufacturing. As cost competitiveness in the U.S. continues to improve compared with, for example, China, Japan, and Western Europe, a growing number of companies big and small are considering repatriating the production of everything from machinery to electronics to U.S. shores. Some companies have already begun the shift. Others are planning to use the U.S. as a manufacturing platform from which to export to the rest of the world. The Boston Consulting Group has estimated that these trends could help create 2.5 million to 5 million U.S. jobs by the end of the decade. (See "Behind the American Export Surge," BCG Focus, August 2013.) But even if economic factors are swinging in favor of the U.S.,...

Dramatic shifts in cost competitiveness around the world over the past decade are starting to spur a number of companies to change their global sourcing and manufacturing investment strategies, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, titled The Shifting Economics of Global Manufacturing: How Cost Competitiveness Is Changing Worldwide, is being released today. Global automakers are expanding production in the UK, for example, which has emerged as one of Western Europe's lowest-cost manufacturing locations, while at the same time they are slashing capacity in Australia, now one of the most expensive. In Mexico,...

Too few corporate leaders are thinking about how the next generation of robotics will affect their workforce, operations, business models, and competitive position, experts say. The rise of robotics is gaining traction much faster than most executives realize and will have a major impact on the competitiveness of companies and countries alike, according to new research by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Spending on robots worldwide is expected to...

Employees have become an essential component of brands, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, titled One Branding: Uniting the Employer, Corporate, and Product Experience, is being released today. "Branding was once highly product oriented," said Antonella Mei-Pochtler, a senior partner and lead author of the report. "But brand experiences are now largely shaped by the people on the front lines who interact daily with customers, who have rising expectations. Employees have become, in effect, brand ambassadors." Consumers today,...

Companies That Delivered Superior Total Shareholder Return After a Period of Below-Average TSR Performance Are Heavily Overrepresented in BCG Rankings of the Top Ten Value Creators in 26 Industries. Some of the most successful value creators since the 2008 global financial crisis are companies that have figured out how to achieve a comprehensive TSR turnaround, according to a recent report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). One in 5 companies that delivered below-average TSR during the previous five-year period...